As council staff gain access to all flooded areas, more damage is being discovered.

A major landslip at Budgong and damage to a wharf at Island Point Road, St Georges Basin is the latest major damage discovered.

Numerous roads throughout the city have suffered significant damage and council work crews are undertaking repairs.

Council has come under fire for its “supposed slowness” in opening both entrances to the Shoalhaven River at Shoalhaven Heads and further south at Lake Conjola.

General manager Russ Pigg is confident council could defend threats of a class action from Conjola residents over the amount of flooding to their village.

“I’m interested hearing talk of possible class action,” he said.

“I don’t know where it can possibly land.

“I’d be astounded if it gets too many legs to tell you the truth.”

He said he was confident council did all the right things prior to and during the flood event.

“I’m confident at both Lake Conjola and at the Shoalhaven River at Shoalhaven Heads, the staff were very conscious of what the triggers were that prompted action under the Entrance Management Plan,” he said.

“The staff monitored all the situations through the Bureau of Meteorology site and reacted in a timely way. They monitored right through Tuesday evening and night so they could react on Wednesday.”

He said council would hold a debrief and analyse everything that occurred during the emergency.

“In any debrief you hope you can improve somewhere,” he said.

“The important role the Natural Resources and Floodplain Management Committee plays is to formally review each flood event and looking at that from experience, looking at the Estuary Management Plans and Entrance Management Plans to see whether they need to be reviewed, changed or whether they’ve actually performed as is expected.

“In any event like this, with very heavy rainfall over that 48-hour period, there is no prevention of flooding. All the measures in the Entrance Management Plan are designed to mitigate flooding, if that’s possible.

“Every flood is certainly different and council, through these committees, and staff, try to manage it the best they can in every event.”

A council briefing revealed opening the entrance at Lake Conjola made no difference during last week’s flood event.

The lake peaked 12 hours after it had been opened to the ocean.

Council’s floodplain manager Isabelle Ghetti said despite the lake being open it rose 10 centimetres an hour and continued to rise.

“Lake Conjola opened naturally, on its own. It being open made no difference to the level of flooding,” she said.

“We have a number of criteria to be met and they are determined by our Entrance Management Policies, which are available on our website.

“They clearly outline what criteria need to be met in order for us to open an entrance and we have to be very careful when we open an entrance not to make the situation worse.

“We have to make sure the river or lake levels are higher than the ocean.”

The question of dredging the lake has also been raised, with Ms Ghetti saying the objective of dredging was never anything to do with flooding.

“The objective of dredging was to facilitate an entrance opening and an efficient entrance opening and to connect the Cunjurong boat ramp with the main lake body,” she said.

“We tried to always make it clear to the community dredging Lake Conjola was not for the purpose of mitigating or stopping flooding. We have studies that show dredging would not have done anything for the flooding last week.”

She did say the area and in particular Lake Conjola received more rainfall than what was forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Originally published as Damage Bill Rises by South Coast Register